Scary Blue

Scary Blue; ow I ad forgotten the inflight blandishments comparing the relative merits of death v Elizabeth Arden.
Also the excitement & relief afforded by the possibility of saving 45p on a £6 sarny, after a trip to Paris. Bollocks Ainsley, I've got a baguette.
Also the New Inflight Food - honestly - Porridge!

'Omigod I forgot to save 45p...'

Further captions are invited, in the spirit of inviting further captions.
Naturellement Jill & I had fun playing with the pencils & filling out the questionnaires about the flight. I made particular mention of the Complimentary Magazine; anything suggesting I was gorgeous & looking even partially radiant after negotiating le Metro (see previous bit) was to be encouraged.
Mind you I'd quite like to take on a Grumpy magazine, that'd keep me occupied for hours. Maybe they're only for the longhaul flights. Jill prodded the laminated info sheet on the back of the seat in front of us & opined that she didn't think much of these individual TVs.

Below is a picture of some tubes. They are at Charles de Gaulle Airport & way back, was it in the 70's, Jacques Tati, alias M. Hulot, featured them in une filme de the ridiculous & dehumanising effects of Modern Life. His earlier films include Jour de Fete, les vacances de M. Hulot & Traffic. Darned if I can remember the title of the tubes one but when I surfaced into them I had a sense of deja vu & felt I was not exactly in the film but certainly not in quite the reality I'd been concentrating on.
Thrilling, eh.
Thing is nowadays you don't notice them - which is what he thought would happen.
H'm.
To be fair I'd had an intimation of his presence a few hundred yards earlier, at the passport control bit. Firstly, having been caught out by this myself, I was amused to watch others in the snake queue, controlled meekly by little webbing cordons, amusing themselves by watching newcomers realising the possibilities for bucking le system & joining the shorter queue, which turned out to be for EEC passports only. And having to cover their mistake & rejoin the queue somehow, somewhere .. there's a place for us .. yeh but not in front of Me, pal. Or Us. Or - er - harumph. I fear G. Bretagne et les Royaumes Unis ne sont pas in the Common Market yet, as far as passports are concerned. Arf.
Any road up, as they say in Yorkshire, here's one of M. le Badger being good, ostensibly, & wearing his seabelt.
We asked the lady in the nice clothes shop in le Marais Qu'est-ce que c'est badger in francais? She didn't know, & we couldn't understand what she was saying, so she pinched her nose & pointed to him. Non - il n'est pas Skunk. Il est - oh never mind.
Turns out it's Blaireau. Sorry I will not bring myself to call him that.
However the French have 2 verbs to badger; Harceler, ie to Hassle & Tarabuster, to - well, Badger.
Have you been tarabusted recently?
I will tarabust. You are tarabusted. Having been tarabusted etc.
M. le Badger is no stranger to international travel. We first met on the Tasman Sea, as vomitous, vertiginous crew, shipmates on HMB Endeavour. Having completed her circumnavigation of the globe & endured a week of complete meteorological shite, we sailed back into Sydney. Some months later, his work being done, his fate wasn't looking good; either he was to be Archived, or, more possibly, disembowelled & nailed to a topmast. Nasty.
But there was to be a 3rd possibility that they had not counted upon, & that was that he was almost forgotten. Until he was spotted on a pile of timber, on a wharf elsewhere in Sydney, alongside which was The Southern Man - a freighter bound for Brisbane, thence Eastwards, passing Cape Reinga, bound for Auckland.
Casually, he confided that he was intending a spot of ringbolting - only he needed some assistance with the gangplank & it looked as though this was going to be hauled aboard any minute.
His bucko messmate was also due on board this vessel, in fact had been for some months. A gaggle of her crew, orange boiler-suited Sri Lankans, lounged about, taking advantage of the last few moments before she cast off & their services would be required. They watched impassively as said mate raised herself from the warm timbers & shouldered her pack. They were silent, shifting their weight as she approached the gangway & ran their gauntlet. As she strode up it, they made way for her to pass. Finally, one of them spoke, breaking the tension.
'You're late,' he said. And collapsed into helpless giggles.
But that was in another country ...